Bijna zeventien en toen al beloftevol student schilderen, tekenen en beeldhouwen aan de Glasgow School of Art, Schotland, zijn geboorteland waar Alexander Goudie in Paisley werd geboren in 1933. Niet onmiddellijk op zoek naar de persoonlijke drijfveren maar eerder geïnspireerd door grote meesters als John Lavery, George Henry en James Guthrie. De manier waarop zij olieverf gebruikten, de realistische keuze van het onderwerp, de persoonlijke verwerking van hun onderwerp, de portretten en landschappen. Het vak.

His son, painter and broadcaster Lachlan Goudie explains:
‘They studied the properties of pigments and mediums, the tension between line and colour, the methods of modelling form and transferring your lived experience onto canvas.’

He travelled to Paris in 1953 where he was impressed by the work of Courbet and Rodin, having little interest in contemporary art movements such as Futurism and Cubism. He was mainly interested  in masterly but conventional art and spent some time in 1957 in Toledo and Madrid studying Velasquez and El Greco. He conducted an extensive painting tour of France the following year and in 1959 had his first visit to Brittany. He married Marie-Renee Dorval, a native of Brittany, in 1962.

The landscape and people of Brittany were to exert an important influence on Goudie’s work. He had a particular appreciation for the work of Paul Gaugin, who was also inspired by Brittany, and he had his first major exhibition of Breton paintings at the Scottish Gallery in 1966. He also had a career as a portraitist and he produced portraits of, amongst others, the Queen and the Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay of Clashfern. In 1970 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Goudie werd een prominente en charismatische figuur in de kunstwereld, gewild om zijn portretten met onder andere Lord Chancellors, zakenmagnaten, beroemdheden (waaronder Billy Connolly) en Hare Majesteit Koningin Elizabeth II, en prachtige stillevens. Door het werk dat hij in zijn atelier in een Victoriaans palazzo in Glasgow produceerde, bouwde hij een benijdenswaardige reputatie op. Maar wat tijdens zijn vroege carrière misschien minder gewaardeerd werd, was de mate waarin hij het schilderen van portretten van zakenlieden, beroemdheden en royalty’s afwisselde met het portretteren van boeren en trawlervissers in Bretagne, waar hij vanaf 1961 elke zomer twee maanden naartoe reisde.

Still Life with Bottles and Open Drawer would have been painted in Alexander Goudie’s studio in our family home in Glasgow. My father’s elaborate and richly painted still lifes were extremely sought after. In a series of paintings in the mid 1980s he often took inspiration from the objects that surrounded him in his studio – the tools of his trade. They are, in themselves, very humble items; worn brushes, a jar of white pigment, an old copper saucepan which he would use to prepare size, when priming his canvasses. 

But in the way that Alexander Goudie painted them, each object is afforded an extraordinary, sculptural presence. The handling of the paint displays a mastery of confident and economical brushwork. Just enough detail is given to summon up each object and the palette of colours deployed is both subtle and precisely modulated. The overall effect is an image which, for me, resembles a kind of painter’s altar – a profound and powerful tribute to the artist’s craft. (Lachlan Goudie, zoon van- The Scottish Gallery)

Toen in de tweede helft van de 20e eeuw de conceptuele kunst opkwam, bleef Goudie onverminderd vasthouden aan zijn principes van schilderkunst, vakmanschap en techniek. Zijn zoon Lachlan Goudie, zelf een bekroond media-man, auteur en schilder, zegt hierover:

'Tot zijn laatste adem was hij een onvervalste romanticus, een egotripper, een kunstenaar ondergedompeld in de traditie van de schilderkunst. Hij was een leven gewijd aan kleur en schilderkunstige flamboyantie, een oog en een hand die zijn meest gewaardeerde ervaringen met ongeëvenaarde vaardigheid documenteerde. Ik zal altijd zijn leerling zijn.' 

A collection of 54 large paintings by the late Scottish artist Alexander Goudie, depicting the story of Robert Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter, are to go on display in full for the first time since they were completed in 1996.
The paintings illustrate the story of Burn’s Tam O’Shanter and were painted by Goudie in 1995 prompted by the approaching bi-centenary of the poet’s death.

A selection of the massive paintings have been on view in Rozelle House, in Ayr, but the sheer size of the works will fill all the spaces at The Maclaurin Gallery and much of Rozelle House as well.
South Ayrshire Council said it was “a mammoth undertaking and a truly historic event not to be missed”.
The series was first shown at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996 and is acknowledged as among the very best of Scottish narrative or illustrative painting.

Goudie’s paintings were in danger of being sold off in separate lots before a consortium of Scottish multi-millionaires including Brian Souter and Tom Hunter intervened with £500,000 to keep the collection together.
The 54 paintings by Goudie, who died in 2004, aged 70, represent each stanza in the poem as Tam makes his wild, drunken ride across the Brig O’Doon, to escape pursuing witches. (The Scottish Farmer)

Lachlan Goudie, the artist’s son son, says: “My dad was obsessed with Tam o’ Shanter and he spent decades of his life creating these images.
“Since childhood, he’d known about Robert Burns and it had been his lifelong ambition to create this complete cycle of images.”
Mr Goudie, who is a painter himself, says: “He was painting Tam o’ Shanter way beyond the point where my mother was shouting ‘enough’.
“He was a professional artist and needed to make a living and my mother looked at these terrifying huge canvasses and thought “we are never going to sell these paintings”.
He says his father was “theatrical, noisy, hilarious and sometimes terrifying” and that is exactly what comes through in the paintings.
Mr Goudie says viewing the cycle turns the black and white text of the poem into the “most vivid fireworks that you can imagine”. (ibidem)

De levensblijheid, het lak hebben aan modes en de verbinding met de eigen cultuur en tradities naast de zin voor onderzoek en liefde voor het eenvoudige, het waren elementen die mij in zijn werk aantrokken. Zeker ook de bewondering die hij levenslang opbracht voor meesters uit het verleden als voor hedendaagse kunstenaars. De vitaliteit drukte hij uit met het gezegde: ‘No one loves life more than artists’. Een uitspraak trouwens van Vincent van Gogh.

Since most of the year is spent working indoors, those annual visits are crucial - the lifestyle of a comparative recluse is exchanged for a much more gregarious existence. Here, as well as work there is living to be done and it has been my good fortune each summer to wed the two, hopefully to their mutual advantage. In any event, I have always lived through my art and in a sense to really taste life to the full I am obliged to put a line around it. Since early childhood this has been my lot, everything which excited my imagination had to be set down in pictorial terms, a magic world where a different language helps explore and explain as well as heighten the experience of living. (Goudie by himself - Alexander Goudie)

Bezoek ook: The Alexander Goudie Trust

https://www.alexandergoudie.org.uk/